Mr.Suhr, I don't know quite what to do with you You are of course free to "correct" me as much as you like, but you do not appear to be very well informed about the things we are discussing.
The Brothers Grimm did certainly collect (not really write) fairy tales/fables. (If you read German well there are many modern critical editions of the Kinder- und Hausmärchen available to consult.) More to the point here, however, they were also the most celebrated [not just German] philologists and in particular phonologists of their period. Grimm's law characterizes the ways in which 1) PIE stop consonants evolved into Proto-Germanic stops and other consonants, 2) voiceless stops become voiceless fricatives, 3) voiced stops become voiceless, 4) voiced aspirated stops become . . . Moreover, Grimm's Law is not just descriptive; it also figures significantly in modern generative grammars I had occasion to quote Pliny the younger here in another context recently, and I will take this opportunity to cite Pliny the Elder's gloss on Apelles' advice to the cobbler: 'Sutor, ne ultra crepidam", «Schuster, bleib bei deinem leisten». John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
